Donald Trump may not have wanted to get involved in the fight over vacating the Speakership, but he has now decided to play kingmaker in the race to replace Kevin McCarthy.

And honestly, McCarthy should be feeling a little more than screwed over by Donald Trump. Remember, Trump backed McCarthy in January – though even that support didn’t get Gaetz and Company in line, which says a lot about Gaetz’s motives and Trump’s clout within the party. But when McCarthy was faced with losing his position, Trump didn’t lift a finger to help him.

But after first declining the idea of being Speaker of the House himself, then reconsidering it as a “temporary” role within the party to “unify” everyone, Donald Trump has finally said that he won’t be Speaker – and offered up an endorsement of Jim Jordan.

Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C., representing Ohio’s 4th Congressional District.

Respected by all, he is now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. As President, I had the honor of presenting Jim with…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) October 6, 2023

In a post on Truth Social shortly after midnight, Trump said Jordan “will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”

Trump’s intervention into the race came after he expressed openness to temporarily serving in the role himself and, per a source familiar with discussions, considered a visit to Capitol Hill to speak with Republicans in the coming days as they weigh a new speaker.

Now, the endorsement does not make this a done deal. Steve Scalise, the current House Majority Leader, is also mounting a strong campaign for himself.

The Louisiana Republican is sending a memo to donors and supporters that describes him as a “fundraising powerhouse” within the House GOP.

“Bolstered by the most successful digital fundraising program in House history, Leader Scalise has raised nearly $170 million to help Republicans win elections,” the memo, obtained by Fox News Digital, stated.

“Over the past five years alone, Scalise has given more than $7.2 million directly to Republican Members and candidates and transferred an additional $50 million directly to the [National Republican Congressional Committee] to win back a Republican House Majority.”

It appears to be an indirect argument to Scalise’s fellow Republicans that he is in the strongest position to take over for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was ousted by a majority vote of eight members of his own party and every House Democrat.

“Leader Scalise first started building his highly-successful small dollar digital fundraising apparatus during his days as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest group of conservative House Republicans. Since then, his operation has grown even more sophisticated, raising more than $94 million online from 450,000 unique donors and directly guiding an additional $1.8 million and 234,000 donors to more than 100 Republican candidates,” the memo said.

“Offline, Leader Scalise hits the road to visit districts across the country to help new candidates and current Members alike secure Republican victories in races. Last election cycle alone, Scalise was the special guest at 171 events for Republican Members and candidates, spending 112 days on the road.”

Now, fundraising for House races is a VERY big deal, since the entire House of Representatives is up for re-election every two years. The very design of House elections means that representatives are locked in a cycle of perpetual fundraising. When House leadership raises money, and it goes into the party pot, or into an individual candidate’s campaign, where an infusion of cash at the last minute for advertising might tip the scales in a tight race, that makes a HUGE difference. Scalise has built up a lot of personal loyalty over the years with these efforts, and it might end up paying off for him. However, the House GOP caucus also is aware that Scalise’s health is an open question, even though his cancer is considered “treatable.”

However, as both Jordan and Scalise make their appeals to the House Republican Caucus, they should be unified on one thing – no more single vote motions to vacate the chair. If both candidates stand firm on that, then what happened to Kevin McCarthy won’t happen again – and a lot of GOP members are saying the same thing.

A growing number of Republicans, led by allies of Kevin McCarthy, are demanding major reforms to prevent a rerun of the historic ouster that Gaetz (R-Fla.) pulled off — using a power that McCarthy handed to his right flank to win the gavel in the first place. Unless the House limits the ability of one member to force a vote on booting the speaker, these GOP lawmakers say, it simply can’t function.

“My vote is dependent on how they’re going to make sure that the same thing that happened [to McCarthy] doesn’t happen again,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), an ally of the former speaker who’s among the loudest advocates for an overhaul of the ouster powers.

Before Tuesday, the so-called motion to vacate hadn’t been used in 113 years. Armstrong argued that it won’t take as long for the next deployment now that Gaetz has used it against McCarthy: “In case we haven’t noticed, we have a lot of members who like the attention.”

McCarthy lieutenants like Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) argue that newly emboldened conservatives are putting any future speaker, even Jordan, the Freedom Caucus co-founder, in an impossible position without changing the rules.

Plenty “of great people that are in this conference … have said, ‘Hell no, I wouldn’t even consider that job, because it’s going to be a complete failure.’ And so that needs to be addressed,” Graves said.

Any conversations about an anti-Gaetz rules change will need to happen quickly. The House GOP is set to meet Tuesday for a closed-door “candidate forum” with Scalise, Jordan and perhaps Hern, if he follows through with a run. Republicans then plan to hold an internal secret-ballot vote on Wednesday to select their choice for speaker.

Graves is correct. There could easily come a day when even Jim Jordan, who Matt Gaetz has called his “mentor,” does something as Speaker that Gaetz decides doesn’t pass his purity test. We have all seen over the last week how well things work when the sword of Damocles – in this case, a single disgruntled member of the caucus with a love of mugging for the camera – is hanging over the head of the Speaker of the House. McCarthy (rather foolishly) believed that Nancy Pelosi would honor her promise to “back him up” in a motion to vacate. We all know what happened next. The next Republican Speaker won’t be going to Hakeem Jeffries to ask for the same “back up.” As a result, neither Jordan nor Scalise should accept the Speakership without a change to those rules. And if they both stand firm on that (Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, who is running a dark horse campaign for Speaker, says that he’s fine with the one vote rule, but won’t complain if it gets changed, either), then maybe this craziness can end and we won’t be looking at a revolving door of Speakers for the next year.

If Jordan does end up as Speaker, it will be a rather hilarious denouement for the Democrats. They loathe Jordan so much more than Kevin McCarthy, but they didn’t stop to consider when they sided with Matt Gaetz and his Republican purists what the end result might be. The Democrats wished for chaos – but they forgot that in politics, you are always wishing on the monkey’s paw. It would serve them right if they played the game to get McCarthy ousted, and ended up with Jim Jordan instead.

Featured image: composite image of Capitol building (via JamesDeMers on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license), Representative Steve Scalise (official Congressional portrait, cropped, public domain), and Representative Jim Jordan (official Congressional portrait, cropped, public domain)